A Secret Identity (13 page)

“Of course with me. Do you think I’m into setting you up with other men?”

I grinned sheepishly. “Sorry. I’m just not used to invitations to formal garden parties from my attorney. If you knew Mr. Havens, you’d understand.”

“I usually don’t enjoy going to these things because I’m not a great chitchat person, but if you’ll go with me, it might actually be fun.”

Be still my beating heart. “What’s the occasion?”

“Each year the president of the Lancaster County Bar Association has a bench/bar reception, and this year it’s at The Paddock with outdoor dining and lots of schmoozing.”

“And it’s formal? Truly formal?”

“Yep. I’ll be pulling my tux out of mothballs,” Todd said. “And The Paddock is a beautiful home. I think you’ll enjoy the evening.”

I had no doubt whatsoever. “I promise not to wear beige.” I made a little face. “I’ve recently realized how monochromatic I am.”

He laughed. “I don’t mind beige, honest. Like I said, it’s…restful.”

Boring
, I thought. I took a deep, empowering breath. “Now I’ve got an invitation for you. My brother, Ward, and his wife, Marnie, are coming up Friday evening. Will you have dinner with us?”

He looked surprised but pleased. “Sure. Sounds nice.”

We wandered slowly out of the woods and back down the road. The sun was now hiding behind some clouds low on the horizon, and prisms of refracted light turned the sky fuchsia and orange and fierce purple. I loved the deep, rich silence and the fact that Todd seemed as easy with it as I was.

It was a rude jolt to hear a car speeding down the road behind us. The short burst of a siren as it neared jarred us. We stepped to the side of the road as an ambulance rushed past. As always, I wondered where it was going and who was the needy person at its destination. I breathed a quick prayer.

When the ambulance slowed and turned into the Zook drive, Todd and I looked at each other, fear and uncertainty on our faces.

“Jake!” Todd said, and we ran toward the house.

But it wasn’t Jake. It was Mary. She had taken the basement stairs too quickly in the fading light, jars of cooled jelly in her arms, and she’d tumbled to the bottom.

When we reached the house, the emergency medical technicians were already inside checking her. Mary lay half on the basement floor, half on the stairs, her right leg twisted around the upright that supported the railing. There was blood all over the place.

“She cut herself on broken glass,” Jake said from his wheelchair when he heard my gasp. John and Elam stood at the foot of the stairs watching, their faces pale and frightened.

Mary was in severe pain and trying not to show it. She did fairly well—probably much better than I ever would.

“Breathing’s okay,” said a curly haired young woman with glasses. “Her lungs are clear. Blood pressure’s okay too. No bleeding in the ear. The blood appears to be from external wounds.”

“Her pupils are equal,” said the second EMT, a short, stocky man who was busy applying pressure to a large gash in Mary’s right thigh. “Hand me some pads and a couple of cling bandages.”

“I missed my step,” Mary managed to say. “I was almost to the bottom, but I missed.”

The woman nodded. “And your arms were full so you couldn’t protect yourself.”

“I fell on the jars.”

Quickly the EMTs staunched the hemorrhaging.

“We want to protect this leg, Mrs. Zook, but we don’t want to straighten it right now. We’re also going to put a KED splint on you to protect your back. A fall down the stairs is always dangerous,” the young woman said.

“But I only fell three or four steps,” Mary said in a weak voice.

“We can’t take a risk here in case of spinal or cervical injury.”

Working with speed and care, they padded Mary’s leg with blanket rolls and wrapped it to hold the rolls secure. In a few more minutes she was wrapped in a splint that went from her head to her hips and closed with Velcro straps down the front. Then the EMTs transferred her to a rigid backboard.

The female EMT positioned herself at Mary’s head, the man at her feet.

“On three,” she said. “One, two, three.” They lifted the backboard.

The woman began to ascend the stairs, and Todd moved quickly to grasp the board and help her with the weight. Elam stepped up to help at Mary’s feet. I held the front door, and in no time Mary was in the ambulance. Jake had followed us outside by way of a detour into his apartment to use his ramp. His face was closed and dark, and when he turned to his father and brother and spoke, his voice was harsh.

“Come on. We’ll follow her to the hospital.”

John and Elam nodded and trailed him to his van, looking back at the ambulance as if they wanted to do something more for Mary. Jake kept his eyes straight ahead and his shoulders rigid. I thought he was struggling to hold himself together—and not just because his mother was badly hurt.

He hadn’t been able to help. When it was time to carry her, he’d had to sit helplessly as others lifted her. He’d had to watch his brother and Todd do what he yearned to do. Even I, in holding the door, had assisted his mother while he was forced to endure being useless. He’d had to turn away and roll into his rooms so he could use his ramp. He’d discovered yet another searing limitation of his injury.

My heart ached for him as much as for Mary.

When Jake was in his van, the young woman EMT approached me where I stood with Todd. She kept glancing over her shoulder toward the van.

“Excuse me,” she said very softly. “Can you tell me his name? The guy in the wheelchair?”

“Jake Zook,” I said.

A smile swept across her face. She doubled her small fist, pumped it discreetly, and said softly, “Yes!”

I watched her, intrigued. “Do you know him?” I asked, realizing that was a foolish question even as I said it. If she knew him, she wouldn’t have to ask his name.

“Yes,” she said as she turned to the ambulance. “But not really.”

Now there was a clear answer if ever I heard one.

The other EMT leaned out of the back door of the ambulance.

“Come on, Rose,” he called impatiently. “You’re holding us up!”

On Wednesday afternoon I went to Todd’s office for my appointment. Mrs. Smiley was just as moved by my presence this time as she had been last week.

“Hello, Mrs. Smiley,” I said with gusto. “It’s good to see you again too. I’ve missed you. And I love your brown dress. It just matches your brown shoes. But aren’t long sleeves a bit warm?”

I got no response beyond a look that would curdle milk, but then I didn’t expect any, especially in the face of my phony jocularity.

“Miss Bentley, please have a seat.” Her voice was cool and correct, and she gestured to the paisley chairs with a beautifully manicured hand. I noticed her nails were bright red today, with the ring finger of each hand sporting one white and one blue diagonal stripe on the scarlet enamel with a small white star blinking at me as she typed. I didn’t know who did her nails, but she clearly knew how to reach that hidden, repressed part of Mrs. Smiley that I could only guess at.

After ignoring me for a few minutes, Mrs. Smiley rose from her chair and nodded briefly at me. “This way, Miss Bentley. Mr. Reasoner will see you now.”

How did she know he’d see me now, at this precise moment? I hadn’t heard her contact him. I hadn’t heard him contact her. Maybe in her other wild fingernail life Mrs. Smiley was a spy and the office was full of sophisticated electronic gadgets that allowed her to snoop on Todd, clearly a man dangerous to the United States. She would call Homeland Security any minute now. I smiled at Mrs. Smiley, imagining her karate kicking a villain from here to Paradise—the small town over on Route 30, not the one Jesus invited the thief on the cross to share with Him.

When I entered his office, Todd rose from behind his massive desk with alacrity, his hand extended in welcome. He showed me to the cozy alcove beneath Kristie’s and Mary’s paintings. He took a seat beside me on the sofa.

Mrs. Smiley noted our physical proximity and signaled disapproval by a slight sniff as she closed the door.

“I don’t think she likes me,” I said.

He grinned. “She just likes playing mother hen by protecting me from predatory females.”

“Ah.” I grinned back. “Of course.”

“So how’s Mary?” he asked. “Is she still in as much pain?”

“She’s still in the hospital, but she’s going to be fine. I stopped in for a few minutes earlier today. She has a broken right leg, but the break is clean. They had to wait for the swelling to go down to cast it. She also has several gashes from the broken jelly jars; the ones on her right hip and leg and one on her right forearm are especially deep. They’ve been stitched, but one’s developed an infection. They hope to send her home by the end of the week, and the home-health nurse will come to check on her daily.”

“How are they managing at the farm? Are you cooking?”

“On that wood stove? Are you kidding?”

He folded his hands across his stomach. “It is pretty intimidating, I imagine.”

“Understatement.” I shuddered at the thought of tackling it. “No, they’ve got a
maud
.”

“A
maud
?”

“A maid. A single woman from their church has moved in for the duration. She’s living in Ruth’s old room. Her name’s Esther Yoder. She’s this cute little thing about nineteen years old with big dark eyes and rosy cheeks. And I notice that her eyes follow Elam more than casually.”

“Watch it, romance writer. You’re hatching a plot here.” He smiled.

“No,” I said. “If I wanted to hatch a plot, I’d go after Rose, who knows but doesn’t know Jake. Do you think she’s the Rose that Kristie mentioned? The one we’re not allowed to talk to Jake about?”

“I’m supposed to know the answer to this?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’m paying you to know all the answers or at least to know where to find them.”

“Well,” he said, settling back against his end of the sofa like he’d finally found a topic of discussion he was comfortable with. “I’ve done some checking around and have come up with some suggestions for you on trying to find your grandfather’s background.”

I leaned forward eagerly. “So tell me.”

“First, it’d be a good idea to go to the agency he was adopted through and ask them if they’ll open his records. They’ll probably say no, not without the consent of the Biemsderfers. They should be willing to trace the family and ask on your behalf if they’ll agree to open the records.”

“I thought of that,” I said. “I went to the library yesterday, and the research librarian and I spent some time trying to trace the Children’s Home Society of the City of Lancaster: For the Relief of the Poor and the Care of Destitute Children.” The long title rolled off my tongue. It’d never make it in today’s world of acronyms, but it sounded solid and slightly stuffy and very proper to me, very 1918, like men in neckties and vests and bowlers and ladies with gowns to the floor and gloves and large-brimmed hats. “We found that the agency headquarters burned to the ground in 1926, and all records were lost. There is no hope of any information there.”

“Oh.” Todd looked slightly nonplussed, though I wasn’t sure if it was at my wealth of information or at the fact that I’d beaten him to the idea.

“When I learned there was no help to be had there,” I continued, “I went to Harrisburg to the Bureau of Vital Statistics and talked to them.”

“I
told
you that would be a useless trip.” He was somewhat abrupt in his comment. “I told you not to waste your time.”

“You were absolutely right,” I admitted. “But I had to try, you know.”

“Why?” he asked. “My word isn’t good enough?”

“It’s called double-checking,” I said.

“You think I don’t double-check everything, Cara?”

“I’m sure you do,” I said to soothe his ruffled feathers, though why they should be ruffled was beyond me.

He cleared his throat, trying to keep his pique controlled. “There’s another very slim possibility, but you could check the newspapers for a birth announcement. I don’t imagine there would be one, given that this was probably an illegitimate birth, but…” He shrugged.

“I thought of that too” I said. “I went to the Lancaster Newspapers, Inc., offices today and spent some time with the researcher in the morgue. There’s not a Biemsderfer mentioned in the paper from 1917 to 1919. In 1920 a Dwayne Biemsderfer married a Rebecca Crum. But I need a birth announcement, not a wedding announcement. And I need a female Biemsderfer, not a male.”

Todd sat still, staring at me with surprise, I supposed.

“Next I went to visit Orphan’s Court to see if they could help me.” I turned to him accusingly. “Did you know that Orphan’s Court has nothing to do with orphans and adoptions? It has to do with probate issues and estates. Why in the world don’t they just call it Probate Court or Estate Court? It would save innocent people lots of confusion. By the way, Lancaster has a very nice courthouse. I was impressed.”

I smiled and sat primly, my bone sandals neatly side-by-side. Mrs. Smiley would have been proud had she seen me. I hoped Todd noticed that my cream pants outfit had a tiny coral flower pattern through it. Not all beige today, though certainly not full of pizzazz.